On his quest for happiness, Per decides to leave Jutland and an upbringing in a strict religious home. He runs from his family and his patriarch father, and sets sail towards Copenhagen to become an engineer. Parallel to his studies, he works on a visionary energy project based on wind and wave energy, a project so much ahead of its time, that professors consider him insane and far too self-confident. However, Per’s project becomes a success and he marries the beautiful Jakobe who is a part of a wealthy Jewish family. One would imagine that Per’s happiness now is made. But Per’s childhood keeps haunting him and his dogmatic family cannot accept his new life. Despite his luck and success, Per is unable to fully cut the strings to his strict religious background, and he now fears that he will repeat his father’s patriarchist behavior.
Rosemarie is a hard-working young woman living in a small English town in the 1950's. She left Austria with her father during the war to escape the Nazi oppression and since then, despite poverty and loneliness, she has always kept the faith that better days would arise. When she meets Anton, one of her father's friends, she immediately falls in love and starts believing in a fortunate destiny with him. Against all impediments, their secret love affair may help Rosemarie to find out where she really belongs.